Carlos Slim: We want to invest more in Israel; The Mexican billionaire told President Shimon Peres and a delegation of 80 Israelis about his admiration for Israeli technology

Carlos Slim: We want to invest more in Israel

The Mexican billionaire told President Shimon Peres and a delegation of 80 Israelis about his admiration for Israeli technology.

28 November 13 08:57, Globes’ correspondent

President Shimon Peres met Mexico’s wealthiest businessman Carlos Slim yesterday. Peres is on a state visit to Mexico, heading a delegation of 80 top Israeli executives that is seeking to deepen economic, diplomatic and security cooperation between the two countries. Peres said, “The fact that Israel did not have natural resources led us to rely on and nurture our human resources and encourage young people in Israel to dare, to break through barriers, and to think big.” Read more of this post

Singapore’s Home-Price Decline Accelerates After Curbs

Singapore’s Home-Price Decline Accelerates After Curbs

Singapore’s home prices fell at a faster pace in October, dropping 1.2 percent from the previous month as evidence builds that the government’s efforts to cool the property market are working. The city-state’s residential property index fell to 159.1 points last month after declining a revised 0.9 percent in September, according to the National University of Singapore’s Singapore Residential Price Index. The measure tracking prices in the central region decreased 1.4 percent in October. Read more of this post

Rice Bowl Plan Brings Myanmar Back to the Future: Southeast Asia

Rice Bowl Plan Brings Myanmar Back to the Future: Southeast Asia

Myanmar plans to more than double rice shipments as the country that used to be the largest exporter embraces trade and opens its economy, challenging Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia for sales amid a global glut. Shipments may increase to 2.5 million metric tons in 2014-2015 from an estimated 1.8 million tons in the year that started April 1, according to Toe Aung Myint, director general of the department of trade promotion at the Ministry of Commerce. Exports are targeted to increase to 4.8 million tons in 2019-2020, Toe said in an interview in Hong Kong. Read more of this post

Brazil’s Central Bank Raises Interest Rate to 10%

Brazil’s Central Bank Raises Interest Rate to 10%

Latin American Central Bank May Slow or Stop Rate Hikes

PAULO WINTERSTEIN

Nov. 27, 2013 7:03 p.m. ET

SÃO PAULO—Brazil’s central bank raised its benchmark interest rate on Wednesday by half a point to 10% as expected and hinted it may be about to switch gears. The monetary policy committee unanimously voted to raise its Selic rate for a sixth consecutive time. In a post-meeting statement, the monetary authority reiterated it was “giving continuity” to the rate adjustment process as it tries to bring inflation down to the bank’s target of 4.5%. Read more of this post

Time to force banks to kick their easy money habit

November 27, 2013 4:38 pm

Time to force banks to kick their easy money habit

By Patrick Jenkins

Without fixes from the ECB, near normal funding might have resumed, writes Patrick Jenkins

The usually staid world of British banking has been titillated in recent days by revelations about the drug-taking of the Co-operative Bank’s former chairman,Paul Flowers. Crystal meth, it seems, was the reverend’s drug of choice. There are lessons for the co-operative movement to learn, mostly around governance. But there may be a more instructive parallel to draw with eurozone bank funding. Read more of this post

Swiss Come to Their Senses on Soak-the-Rich Vote

Swiss Come to Their Senses on Soak-the-Rich Vote

Some of my best friends are very rich — people with condos on Central Park West and tastefully refurbished palazzi in Italy. The puzzle: Why do so many of them vote Democratic or praise the high-taxing European welfare state? How rich? When one of them had an art lover on the phone, who was offering to pay $30 million for a famous painting, he refused. Frustrated, the would-be buyer groaned: “Look, man, I just more than doubled the going price for this piece, and you still won’t take it. Why not?” Read more of this post

Negative Rate Experiment in Denmark Is Seen Stretching Into 2015

Negative Rate Experiment in Denmark Is Seen Stretching Into 2015

Economists at Denmark’s biggest banks predict the nation’s benchmark interest rate, which has been negative since July 2012, won’t climb over zero until 2015 marking an historic experiment with extreme monetary policy. Copenhagen-based Nationalbanken, which uses rates together with currency reserves to defend the krone’s peg to the euro, will be anchored in sub-zero territory by crisis measures taken by the European Central Bank, according to economists at Danske Bank A/S, Sydbank A/S and the Danish unit of Svenska Handelsbanken AB. Jyske Bank A/S and Nordea Bank AB see negative rates until the end of next year. Read more of this post

India: The World’s Most Over-Optimistic Country

The World’s Most Over-Optimistic Country

What a difference a couple of months can make. In September, India’s growth rate had slowed to its lowest in a decade, inflation was high, and the rupee ranked as one of the worst-performing currencies in Asia. Suddenly, the mood has turned more upbeat. The news media brim with confidence that India has “turned the corner.” The stock market rose more than 9 percent last month, to an all-time high. A few weeks ago, Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram said he saw many signs of “green shoots” in India’s economy. Read more of this post

Bimbo to Lala Rush Dividends Before Mexico Capital Gains Tax

Bimbo to Lala Rush Dividends Before Mexico Capital Gains Tax

Mexican stock dividends are poised to rise to a four-year high as companies rush to return cash to investors before a new tax goes into effect next year. Payouts from companies on the benchmark IPC index are set to climb 55 percent from a year ago to at least 19.4 billion pesos ($1.5 billion) in the fourth quarter, the highest since the last three months of 2009, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The figure includes planned dividends not yet paid. Read more of this post

Israel’s ‘capitalist’ government is strangling businesses

 Israel’s ‘capitalist’ government is strangling businesses

The coalition is supposed to be wall-to-wall free-market ministers, but a closer examination of policies reveals it’s big government as usual.

By Sami Peretz | Nov. 25, 2013 | 5:17 AM

It is commonly assumed that the coalition comprises four purely free-market parties determined to make Israel’s economy competitive, private and based on capitalist principles. If you take at face value everything said in public by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Finance Minister Yair Lapid, Economy Minister Naftali Bennett and Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, it is hard to find a word in favor of the government managing the economy. Sometimes, they go so far as to attack the “populism” aimed at the private sector. Such attacks are leveled primarily when they appear at a gathering of business leaders and are trying to make a good impression. Read more of this post

Germany’s Planned Rent Rules Rattle Investors Amid Home Boom

Germany’s Planned Rent Rules Rattle Investors Amid Home Boom

Fixing up derelict Communist-era apartments is losing its allure for Berlin developer Stefan Klingsoehr after two decades of rising profits as Chancellor Angela Merkel clamps down on rents. Merkel’s Christian Democratic bloc and the Social Democratic Party agreed to cap rents on new leases and limit increases after renovations in their four-year government agenda presented today. U.S. and Canadian investors seeking a slice of Klingsoehr’s returns are already withdrawing. Read more of this post

China’s World: Why the Electric-Car Market Is Low Wattage; Shanghai’s Failure to Popularize Electric Vehicles Highlights Challenges for Economic Reform

China’s World: Why the Electric-Car Market Is Low Wattage

Shanghai’s Failure to Popularize Electric Vehicles Highlights Challenges for Economic Reform

ANDREW BROWNE

Updated Nov. 26, 2013 9:26 p.m. ET

SHANGHAI—Even for a foreign visitor to Shanghai, renting an electric car is easy. All that’s required is a valid driver’s license and a passport. And it’s surprisingly cheap: eHi Car Service Ltd. charges the equivalent of just $25 a day for a Chinese-built Roewe with a range of about 90 kilometers. But having completed the paperwork, picked up the keys and eased silently into Shanghai’s chaotic traffic, the first-time electric car driver in the city quickly notices that nobody else appears to be driving one. In fact, there are at most 500 electric cars in Shanghai out of a total of about one million passenger vehicles, according to Zhang Dawei, the founder of EV Buy, a Shanghai company that sources and services electric cars for individuals and corporate users. Read more of this post